A whole new chapter
Book club inspires members as it becomes a story of dreams coming true, report Yang Feiyue in Beijing and Sun Ruisheng in Xinzhou, Shanxi.
Tuesdays are special for some people in the countylevel city of Yuanping, Xinzhou, North China’s Shanxi province. They are literally turning a new page on life. Once they get off work, they grab a pen, bring a notebook and head for the Yuanping Library. There the Time Reading Club will meet and discuss books that its members have recently read.
Such book readings and discussions have been hosted by the club’s founder Fu Xiaoping for six years.
Since its establishment in December 2014, the club has held various reading-based events each Tuesday evening, and launched 200 lectures delivered by established artists and academics, to promote reading and the development of a reading society.
The club has been called “a university without walls” by its members, because it welcomes people from all walks of life, including farmers, workers, teachers, doctors and entrepreneurs.
It was the brainchild of Fu, who set up the organization out of her own love for books. The 45-year-old was born into a literary family in Yuanping, and has loved reading since childhood.
Her initial reason for launching the club was simple — to make amends for not going to a top university. It also allowed her to read books and share ideas.
“I dreamed of going to a top university in my high school years, but I failed to enroll in a good one, because of my low score in the college entrance exams,” Fu confides with frankness.
After graduation, she obtained a job at a local social insurance service center, got married and had a child. Life went on, but Fu couldn’t forget her dream.
Setting up a reading club seemed to be a perfect solution.
A winter’s tale
It was a cold, windy day on Dec 23, 2014, when the club held its inaugural meeting. Fu was nervous. She had put out a notice via her WeChat moments, but had no real idea who would show up.
“The bitter wind blew and it was very cold. I was not sure how it would turn out,” she recalls. The venue, space at a teahouse, had been given for free by a friend.
And then, 16 people arrived. All from different walks of life, such as government workers, teachers and calligraphers. But all shared a love of books and literature.
“Everyone spoke their mind and shared their thoughts. It was a lively experience,” Fu says.
The participants then decided to make it a weekly routine and Fu was elected president of the organization.
Since 2015, the reading club encouraged participants to interpret Shijing, or the Book of Songs, an ancient Chinese collection of poems, also one of the five Confucian classics.
More than 20 club members finished 80 essays that shed light on different aspects of the classic. These were then compiled into a book, which got the attention of Liu Yuqing, vice-president of the China Society for the Study of the Book of Songs, who’s also a professor at the School of Language and Literature of Shanxi University, and head of the university’s School of Chinese Classics.
Liu wrote the preface for the compilation.
“Fewer people are willing to read Shijing these days. I never dreamed that a group of people such as this would take the initiative to study it and deliver such good work,” Liu says.
By the 10th session, Fu had created a WeChat group for club members.
In the discussion panels, everyone, from schoolteachers, business owners to villagers, from teenagers to octogenarians, has had an opportunity to step up to the podium and share their opinions about certain assigned topics. Moreover, there are lectures being held.
“We moved to the teahouse’s meeting room to accommodate more people and some had to share a chair or sit on the floor,” Fu recalls.
It didn’t take long before the teahouse was no longer able to accommodate the volume of members.
Together we grow
In May 2016, the Yuanping Library opened its door to Fu’s reading club.
The library’s meeting room can hold 150 people.
“At first, what everyone shared was based on their reading,” Fu says.
Then, the club participants explored further afield, from Shijing to the classic novel The Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and Tao Te Ching written by Laozi, a philosopher from ancient China, to works by Greek thinker Socrates and other foreign classics.
For the purpose of expanding exchanges and strengthening communication, the club organized a national essay contest themed around “a book and my life” in June 2018 and received more than 1,400 submissions from all over China. This stimulated nationwide public discussions about the role of reading in life.
As of mid-September, the club had read and discussed topics focused on 100 classics. And the club is no longer just a local affair, as many of its club members now come from outside Yuanping, some from Taiyuan, the provincial capital, or other nearby cities of Shanxi province.
One of the regular participants, Han Yanqing, 46, has followed the reading club for years.
She used to work as a receptionist at a local hotel in Yuanping and joined the club to expand her knowledge.
Han says she often found herself at a loss when the hotel guests would inquire about the local history and specialties of Yuanping. As Fu noticed, Han was often an early arrival and took the front seat, listening attentively and taking notes from time to time.
Years of participation has increased her knowledge about the county-level city and allowed her to more effectively deal with guests’ requests.
Even though Han was promoted to the hotel’s headquarters in downtown Xinzhou, where she now takes charge of employee training, every Tuesday, Han returns to Yuanping to attend the sessions held at the reading club.
“The club has offered me, an ordinary reader, a place to study and grow,” Han says. “It helps me better understand my responsibilities in life.
More than 1,000 people have participated in the club’s projects and hundreds of articles were published in literary periodicals and journals, raising the club’s profile in Shanxi province and beyond.
Each kindness
In addition to literature, the club also offers an open platform for enthusiasts in photography, calligraphy, painting, music and recitation. It helps showcase talent, and carries out social services including charity events — donating reading rooms and money to school children in underdeveloped areas.
To date, the club has donated more than 100,000 yuan ($14,930) for those in need, such as children with leukemia or autism, as well as college students from povertystricken families.
Fu was named as a deputy to the Xinzhou people’s congress in 2016 and a nominee of the “top 10 readers” award organized by the National Press and Publication Administration in 2019.
Du Xuewen, chairman of the Shanxi Writers’ Association, says people find the meaning and value of life in reading, and the club has been an ideal place for sharing their ideas and holding discussions.
Looking back, Fu did not expect the club to be such a sensation.
“I started the project to enrich my knowledge through reading, but now I find I have little time for my own hobby,” Fu says, adding that making schedules, seeking and inviting suitable guest lecturers, updating news feeds for the club’s social account and transcribing lecture content for release is all very time-consuming.
But, whenever Fu sees a big audience turnout, she feels that all of the effort is worth it.
“I’m fortunate that I have so many friends who all share the same interests,” Fu says.
“Without their collective devotion, the Time Reading Club won’t be here today.”